Shapeshifting $475m arts space The Shed opens in New York's Hudson Yards. Gerhard Richter, Trisha Donnelly and Steve McQueen will show new commissions.

The Shed, due to open on 5 April where the High Line and Hudson Yards development intersect on Manhattan’s western edge, aims to be the world’s most flexible cultural institution. “It’s part museum, part performing arts centre, part pop-up venue—providing parity across all art forms, for all audiences,” says the artistic director and chief executive, Alex Poots.

The non-profit, which commissions, develops and presents work across performing and visual arts and popular culture, has a gleaming new $475m building to service its lofty ambitions. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with the Rockwell Group, and situated above the West Side rail yards, the eight-level building has a moveable shell that can roll out on wheels into The Shed’s outdoor plaza, adapted from the shipyard technology of gantry cranes as a nod to the site’s industrial past. “It moves quite majestically, like a ship through the sea,” Poots says. It also doubles The Shed’s footprint and provides another sound- and temperature-controlled space for performances and exhibitions, in addition to the building’s versatile theatre, two expansive galleries, rehearsal space and creative lab.